


Gourmet Skittles

by lunapillie



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Renjun is Claire from the BA test kitchen, They are all chefs/bakers, renjun struggles while everyone else has a good time, this a “pastry chef attempts” AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21867844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunapillie/pseuds/lunapillie
Summary: “Hey guys, it’s Renjun and today we’re in the NCT Test Kitchen attempting to make gourmet Skittles.”ORRenjun is Claire from the BA Test Kitchen and struggles trying to make gourmet Skittles and Jeno and Jaemin are somewhat helpful.
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno, Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin, Huang Ren Jun/Na Jaemin
Comments: 9
Kudos: 102





	Gourmet Skittles

**Author's Note:**

> I made this for me because I couldn’t get it out of my head, I just want Renjun to be a baker and the rest of NCT be in charge of a kitchen.
> 
> LMK what you thought and enjoy!

“Hey guys, it’s Renjun and today we’re in the NCT Test Kitchen attempting to make gourmet Skittles.”

As soon as he said that he sighed and looked down at the pile of candy sitting right in front of him, knowing that this probably wasn’t going to end well. But for now, he got to do the fun part, taste testing.

“Skittles are pretty good, so I think we should just try some and see what they taste like and then see what the inside looks like,” Renjun narrated, picking up a small packet of the originals and attempting to tear it open without sending the candies all over the room.

Luckily he managed and as soon as he got one in his mouth, he could see someone sliding over to his side, and he had a very good feeling he knew who it was.

“Injun, whatcha got going on over here?” A familiar voice asked, hooking his chin over the smaller’s shoulder.

“I’m going to be trying to make gourmet Skittles,” Renjun reiterated while wiggling away from the other man but failing.

Jaemin after nodding along, finally put some space between them and leaned heavily onto the counter, “That sounds hard, are you sure you can do it?” He asked, grabbing a pack of the sour ones and cracking it open, sending them scattering around the countertop.

Pretending as if that didn’t even happen, Renjun just continued, “Well I kind of have to, don’t I? That’s the point of the show,” the Chinese man said with a roll of his eyes, “what do you think of Skittles, what’s the most iconic thing about them to you?”

Jaemin popped a few of the candies in his mouth, not even wincing at the sour taste as he chewed, “Mmm, how chewy they are I guess? And the flavor!”

Grabbing his sheet of scratch paper he jotted that note down, “And-”

Before he could even properly start speaking, two fingers were already at his lips and shoving a Skittle between them. His first instinct was to spit the candy out and bite the fingers that were responsible for this, but he didn’t. Just for the sake of his image on YouTube, instead he chewed and swallowed and then proceeded to smack Jaemin repeatedly on the shoulder. Who instead of crying out in pain, just cackled and didn’t even try to move away from the swats. 

“Why did you do that! Who knows where your hands have been!”

Jaemin smiled, cuddling up closer to the other _again,_ “I dunno, I just wanted to. And I promise you my hands are clean, I just got into the kitchen so they are freshly washed, I promise!”

“Okay, sure. Now either go away or watch from afar, I have stuff to do,” Renjun shooed Jaemin away, only to have said nuisance squeeze him in a tight hug and steal more Skittles, before running away into some back room.

The behavior causes Renjun to give the camera a deadpan look before continuing with his work, “Anyway, let do some measurements and then we’ll cut one of these open.”

And so he did just that, finding out that they were 12 millimeters in diameter and that they each weighed about a gram. 

“Oh,” Renjun paused as he cut into the candy, “it’s just the outside that has the color, the inside is this like almost translucent white? I don’t think that I’ve ever noticed that before.”

He did a few more experiments just to see what order things were done and how everything was put together. 

“I guess I should ask some other people’s opinions on Skittles to see what I should change and what I need to keep.”

He turned around and noticed a few people wandering around the kitchen doing this and that, deciding to just call the first person he saw. Which happened to be Jeno who was helping Doyoung with something, but whatever they were doing couldn’t be more important than what Renjun was doing.

“Hey Jeno? Wanna come over here for a second?” Renjun called, waving a few packets in his hands in his attempt to lure his coworker over. 

Jeno hesitated, looking up at Doyoung who presumably rolled his eyes (he was facing away from Renjun so he couldn’t be sure but it was Doyoung so…) but waved him away nonetheless. As the other came bounding over happily, Renjun called over to the elder man. 

“Doyoung hyung you can come over and have some candy too if you want,” Renjun offered politely. 

Doyoung of course declined, “no thanks, I'm not the biggest fan of artificial sweets.”

Renjun nodded, “So if I made these taste like fresher and more like real fruits would you be willing to try it?”

“If you can get it like that, then yeah, I’ll try it.”

Renjun immediately whipped around to face the camera, “You all heard that, it’s on camera. Mark does lose this footage or I’m killing you.”

Behind the camera Mark is doing his best not to cry laughing while also giving a thumbs up.

“Can I come and eat now?” Jeno asked from where he was waiting off at the sides.

Humming, he nodded and beckoned the other over, “Yes. Come eat and tell me what your most and least favorite part of a Skittle is.”

Jeno did just that, separating the various flavors and trying each of them, giving comments on his thoughts on each of the flavors, “Okay guys,” He looked at the camera, hands in a palms out position, “Don’t get mad when I say this but I really don’t like artificial grape flavoring, so this is probably my least favorite one. My most favorite is maybe orange?”

Renjun jotted the words down and pressed for more information, “What’s something you want me to improve about them?”

“I guess like Doyoung hyung said, if you could try to make them less artificially flavored maybe it would taste even better? ‘Cause honestly I don’t mind them right now but I know you can make them even better Injunnie,” Jeno gave his signature sweet smile, one that caused Renjun to flush just a bit.

“Thanks…” He cleared his throat and focused on his paper, “But I’m going to be pretty busy so like, go away.”

“Let me know how things go!” Jeno said, giving him a side hug before jogging back over to where he was previously working. 

Watching the other leave, Renjun turned back to the camera, “while he gets to do normal stuff, we on the other hand are going to go over to the computer to do some research and hopefully find a video of how Skittles are made so our life is made a lot easier.”

  
  


Of course he can hope and dream for an easy time on one of these “Pastry Chef attempts” videos, but it’s never truly the case. His online digging only dug up so much useful information, but seeing how it was made in the factory did give him some insight on how his ingredients should look at each stage of the process.

For a moment, the man was silent as he studied the sheets of paper in front of him, wondering where and how he should begin. The papers were comprised of various lists of all of the information he searched up, ideas of how he wanted to proceed, and another list of people’s likes and dislikes.

“Renjun?” Mark called from behind the camera, something that would need to be cut out later, but also a good gentle reminder that they were filming. All these people behind the camera are waiting for him to start doing something so they can go home on time.

“Sorry I was thinking, just cut this part okay? Count me down and we can go from there, I think I have an idea of where I want to start.”

“Sure. 3, 2…” Mark pointed at Renjun when he wanted him to go ahead with his plans. 

“Alright so we’ve looked up some stuff, and took some surveys which means it’s time to start making things finally,” Renjun said before moving over to gesture at the ingredients he pulled out before having his mini crisis, “think I’m just going to start simple and see what a normal taffy recipe does for us. But I might need to change a few things because when you bite into a Skittle it doesn’t stretch like taffy, so we need to make sure it will set a bit firmer than normal.”

From there he set up his stand mixer, knowing it was going to be easier to do it now while there wasn’t any hot things to attend to. Once that was dealt with, he grabbed his ingredients, mixing the dry ones together before going to the stove to start dealing with that portion of things. It didn’t take too long for the temperature in the pot to rise, and he knew right away that this wasn’t going to be _the_ batch when his temperature went a little bit higher than it was supposed to. But he wasn’t going to waste the mixture without at least trying to test it. 

So he slowly poured the mixture into the mixer, only getting slightly burned with hot sugar a few times. Though he was blaming it on the fact that he was pouring it too fast for the paddles liking.

“Now we are just going to pour this out, wait for it to cool down, and then I can attempt to stretch it,” Renjun sighed (a common theme in this series), knowing for the audience it would be only a second wait, while for him it would be much more than that. 

When the time was up, it was just like he predicted. This was not the batch, the taffy had become so stringy as soon as he started pulling it. Which is why he threw it and his sticky gloves right into the trash as soon as possible so no one who was currently in the kitchen would see his awful mess. 

“I definitely think I got the temperature too high, so we need to go lower by maybe ten to twenty degrees, ” He tapped his chin while thinking of the correct decision, before gathering his ingredients to start over again.

The next batch was definitely better in terms of not falling apart on him, but the color was all wrong and the taste was just okay. 

“I know what it seems like, but I feel like I’m on the right track honestly, so I don’t really feel bad about ending today’s session early. We all know that this project is going to cause at least one late night, so let’s leave while we can,” Renjun sighed, starting to clean up.

The relieved noises were immedient, and the sound of equipment clinking and being taken down was music to all of their ears.

——

Day 2 started out okay, he changed his flavoring method a bit to incorporate lemon zest, which he felt was a good call. He wanted to make the flavor more natural so it seemed like the best direction. The next change was lowering the temperature once again to make the taffy firmer and to have less of a stretch on it when it was bitten into.

To him everything seemed to be going good, but he knew he should have some taste testers before he decided if he was truly all set or not. No longer could he trust his own tongue for judgement, seeing as a majority of the time it just gave him false hope.

He had cut and hand rolled of few bits of taffy to make them sort of resemble the candy they were supposed to. Maybe if they at least looked like Skittles, the others wouldn’t be so harsh on him if the texture or taste was bad.

“Hey guys, wanna try some stuff for me?” Renjun had went up to the first group he saw, which was fortunately or unfortunately Jaemin, Jeno, and Hendery. Two of those people would be bluntly honest with him and one would probably try and save his feelings.

“Oh! Yeah totally!” Jeno grinned and immediately reached out towards the plate that the older man was holding.

Hendery looked more skeptical, “How confident are you in these?”

Jaemin rolled his eyes and snatched one off the plate, “Come on, don’t be a baby dude.” He then proceeded to grab Hendery by the neck and tried to shove the tester into his mouth.

“Hey! Stop! I was gonna try one anyway!”

“Just let me feed you! Open your mouth.”

“No! That sounds so wrong!”

Jeno gently pulled at Jaemin’s arms, who surprisingly let it happen and went willingly. Once they were all calmed down, they finally tried the candy that Renjun came over with about five minutes ago.

“What do you guys think?” Renjun stood there, overly nervous as he watched Jaemin, Jeno, and Hendery taste test his taffy mixture that was going to act as the essential main attraction of his Skittles, “it's kind of close isn’t it?”

The boys all looked at each other and made various noises that really could’ve meant anything. 

“I mean, no offense Jun but it’s kind of a weird texture,” Hendery said lightly, as if he were trying to spare Renjun’s feelings, which only made him feel more annoyed. 

Jeno hurriedly piped in, “honestly I don’t think it’s that bad! It’s pretty close!”

“Injunnie, I’m going to tell you this because I want you to succeed and make some bomb ass candy, but this ain’t it. Look at how stretchy the taffy is still! The flavor is okay but it’s somehow too firm, I can’t really chew it!” Jaemin said.

“Yeah... I just think you need to make it softer? Have you tried adding more butter?” Jeno suggested, still being gentle so he doesn’t offend the smaller man.

It honestly wasn’t a bad suggestion. He just wished that Jeno wouldn’t act like he couldn’t take constructive criticism, and that Jaemin wouldn’t be such an ass when giving his, “okay I’ll try that.”

——

Day 3. The extra butter experiment didn’t go too well, and after attempting to add the butter at the end, he managed to find a mixture that not only he was happy with, but other’s approved of it too. Of course he made them help him stretch out the other flavors, because as if he was going to do it by himself when he knew they were all going to be clambering for a taste when the project was done. But a final version was nowhere near ready yet, especially when it was time to move onto a different challenge, the candy coating. 

This was also causing him some trouble, and he was stuck in a bit of a rut. Luckily for him, Kun, who loved helping them with all their baking and cooking problems, happened to be passing by. 

“Kun ge! I need you!”

Sure he doesn’t like admitting he needs help most of the time, but he knows that the elder isn’t the type to make fun of people in this kind of scenario. Well unless you were Ten, then all bets were off.

Changing his direction immediately, Kun went over to Renjun’s side and looked over at his sullen face, “What’s going on?” 

“Ge, I don’t know what to do,” Renjun said, clearly moping but not wanting to show it.

“Well where are you at right now?” Kun asked, stepping closer and giving the younger’s back a rub as he looked down at the mess on the counter. 

“I’ve made the insides with taffy but I don’t know how to do the outside shell! Everything I’ve tried doesn’t work and it’s been a week!” He cried out, face quickly being buried in his hands.

Kun cooed and continued rubbing Renjun’s back, “Well what have you tried?”

“Thin royal icing and a hard candy shell!”

“Hmm, have you maybe thought about using pastillage? It’s sort of like a clay so maybe you can just fold it over your taffy?” The elder suggested.

The idea wasn’t one that Renjun thought of at all, and it had him perking up in an instant. If he could roll it out thin enough it had to work, and it would probably get hard enough to make that iconic crunchy shell!

Renjun practically threw himself at Kun, giving him a hug (which was very un-Renjun like, but desperate times and all that), “Gege you truly are a genius and I owe you my life!”

There were many emotions that crossed Kun’s face, but mostly confusion, “Um you’re welcome Renjun-ah but you don’t owe me anything. I just like helping you guys when I can.”

“Hey! Junnie why are you giving out hugs to people who aren’t me?”

“Oh great, another pouty young adult. I’m leaving him to you Renjun,” Kun quickly extracted himself from the situation and went back to making whatever stew he was making before he needed to stop his fellow coworker’s mental breakdown. 

“Leave me alone Jaemin, I’m finally out of my rut and I’m ready to order ingredients off of the internet!”

“Here let me walk you to the computer,” Jaemin wrapped his arms around Renjun like an octopus and waddled the both of them over to the computer. 

Normally the elder wouldn’t allow something like this to be filmed and put on the internet, but he was in a really good mood so he let it happen. He also allowed Jaemin and eventually Jeno to help him browse for the last minute items and ingredients he’d need to finally be done with this project. 

——

A week later and things were finally shaping up. Literally, the pastillage worked perfectly, and the two small measuring spoons that Jaemin rigged together to shape the Skittles worked great.

In front of him sat an array of different flavored Skittles that he lovingly (read: painstakingly) colored using an airbrush machine. His mind immediately went to how it could probably be used for drawing on a cakes, and filed that experiment away for a different time. For now he had to do a final taste test before serving his creations. 

“Okay, so I’m just going to try one. We have strawberry, orange, lemon, and we did lime instead of green apple. We also skipped out on grape because I just couldn’t get it to taste anywhere like any kind of grape flavoring and also grape is bad,” He explained, before picking up the orange flavor and holding it out for the camera to see before popping it in his mouth. 

It was a solid ten seconds of him swirling it around in his mouth and testing different aspects of it before he stood up straighter, a satisfied look on his face. 

“I think we did it with this one guys!” Renjun said with a grin, seemingly proud of himself, “I may have thought about pulling my own hair out for a second there but in the end we made it!”

Almost immediately after he said that he had people flocking over to try his sweet treats, and ultimately telling him that he did a good job. Though none of the people were the ones he _really_ wanted approval from. So instead he made sure to gather up some of his homemade Skittles in a little Tupperware container so he could save some for them. 

  
  


“Where were you guys?” Renjun complained, pushing the door open, “I finished my goddamn project and you weren’t even there to taste it!”

“Injun…” Jeno started, looking just a little bit guilty. Jaemin on the other hand just had a stupid smirk on his face and looked like he was about to say something that he could possibly get smacked for. 

Luckily before he could open his mouth, Renjun stomped over and forced himself in between the pair on the couch. He pulled his container out of the pouch of his hoodie, and worked on opening the lid, “you’re lucky I like you guys, because I made sure to save you some. You should’ve seen everyone attacking my tray!”

Looking up, he noticed both men staring at him, an overly fond look on their faces. It made Renjun flush in embarrassment and he was quick to talk again so he wouldn’t have to focus on what they looked like. 

“So are you gonna try them or what?”

This comment seemed to snap the two out of their daze and they both went for the container at the same time. Of course with how small it was, they had to wrestle each other’s hands away, Jaemin somehow coming out the victor, most likely due to cheating. 

He grabbed a strawberry one and crunches down on it, “Ah! You did what I told you to do!” Jaemin looked excitedly at Renjun, “it came out really good! Almost as sweet as you.” A wink to punctuate the flirt. 

Jeno from his other side nodded in agreement, “The inside is almost the same, if not better than a normal Skittle! And you didn’t include grape!”

“Yeah well I live with you guys so I didn’t want to hear you complaining about me not listening to your ideas,” he huffed, staring down at the candies in his lap, “plus I always take your suggestions before others, it’s the boyfriend privilege.”

“Aw Injunnie! Are you just buttering us up so we can make you something in return?” Jaemin asked, nuzzling his face against Renjun’s. 

“He’s not like you Nana, Injun is just very dedicated to his craft!” Jeno defended, lifting a hand to run through his smaller boyfriend’s hair. 

“Thank you!” Renjun looked offended for a moment before he turned to Jaemin, “but you are making dinner tonight, right?”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave some comments and kudos! And let me know what you want to see from me next!
> 
> find me on:  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/lunapillie)  
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/lunapillie)  
> [ko-fi](https://ko-fi.com/lunapillie)  
> 


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